


Arc Reactor

by Seneschal



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Drabble, Gen, No Plot, Self-Loathing, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, just Tony angsting, nothing happens in this, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2322119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seneschal/pseuds/Seneschal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It sits in his chest, heavy and cold and alive with so much more than electricity. He thinks about clawing it out, sometimes, only that wouldn't be fair to all the people whose lives he'd stolen. No rest for the wicked, they say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arc Reactor

It sits heavy in his chest, a leaden weight of metal and glass and energy thrumming constantly. It replaces bones, displaces muscle, presses on his heart and lungs and has him waking up in the night unsure of where dream and reality end and begin. _(Asleep, he's submerged, tasting water, inhaling it, heavy in his lungs, foul in his mouth, drowning/Awake he's suffocating with air in his lungs and a pressure that comes from inside his chest, keeps him from breathing, that grates against his bones as he breathes, slowly suffocates him without killing.)_

Sometimes his heart pounds so hard he looks down, expects to see the arc reactor moving in his chest, but it doesn't. _(Screwed into the bone, he knows, it isn't going anywhere, can remember the whine of the drill and the agony of metal screwing into living bone--no anasthesia, they don't have anasthesia in the desert, no painkillers for prisoners)_ He just sees his chest, defaced now by the ragged scarring, the little places where bone healed raggedly from the cuts, lumps under the skin, the muscles that had been moved and now were anchored differently from where they should be. The center of it all, the reactor; it glows bright, pale blue, unavoidable in the expanse of his chest. Worse than a robot, less than a human. Not a cyborg, yet, but not quite human anymore. _(Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.)_

He isn't ashamed of it, he tells himself and anyone who'll listen. He's not ashamed of the brightly glowing evidence of all his failings, all his mistakes and all of the people he's killed over the years, glaring coldly and endlessly out from his chest. He's not ashamed of it. Why would he be ashamed to display for the world to see all of the ways he's fucked up. _(Why would he be ashamed to be reminded every day of Yinsen, one more man he's failed, one more red mark on his ledger)_

It's his greatest strength, what allows him to pilot the suit better than anyone else--better than Rhodey even; better, he tells himself, because of the reactor, because he can't believe he'd be better than a man like Rhodey at anything, even if it is piloting a suit he designed for himself and himself alone. _(a suit stolen by his best friend but we don't think about that, Tony, we don't think about that...)_ It's given him so much, he recognizes, through his hatred of the thing implanted inside his body. A purpose, a life, a family. 

It's only natural that something so powerful, so visible, would be coveted by others. And Tony Stark? He's only minor collateral damage in the face of getting something like the reactor. _(The golden goose has one more egg left)_ It hasn't even occurred to Tony that someone might take it from him. That someone might want it. Obie shows him, though, how vulnerable he is. _(Hands in his chest, hands on him, familiar whiskey-and-cigar breath on his face, the face of a man he loved like a father smiling at him while leaving him to die)_ And he's Tony Fucking Stark, and he's not ashamed of it, he isn't afraid of it, he's Tony Fucking Stark and everybody knows he has no shame. _(They used to know he has no heart, but now it's out there for everyone to fucking see, bright and round and blue and cold in his chest)_

The truth Tony will never tell anyone is that he hates the arc reactor, but he hates himself more. So every morning he stands in front of the mirror and makes himself look at it, the scarred blue eye staring back out of his chest like a bad parody of Fury's glare. It accuses him silently every morning, and he stares into it and acknowledges all of the people he's killed, all of the orphans and widows he's made. He accepts them all, because they are all his fault. And then he pulls on his shirts, his tank tops with the hole cut in them to show off his guilt for everyone else to see, tosses back a shot of whatever is closest at hand, and steps out of his room for another day of lies. And smiles.

_(Stark men are made of iron.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble I just found sitting around in my documents file that I'd forgotten about. Posted without editing it, written stream-of-consciousness like most of my stuff, so don't expect perfection.


End file.
